The call for applications for Wikimania Scholarships to attend Wikimania 2010 in Gdansk, Poland (July 9-11) is now open. The Wikimedia Foundation offers Scholarships to pay for selected individuals' round trip travel, accommodations, and registration at the conference. To apply, visit the Wikimania 2010scholarships information page, click the secure link available there, and fill out the form to apply. For additional information, please visit the Scholarships information and FAQ pages:

I am requesting the change of my nickname at MetaWiki. I have four years on Wikipedia (more than 3 years on the Quechua Wikipedia), this old nick Kanon6917 is in disuse in other personal accounts since now my email is Kanon6996@... I am trying to unify all my accounts and also on Wikipedia with this definite nickname (I have just done so on the Spanish Wikipedia and on the English Wikipedia). Thanks in advance. Kanon6917 07:14 29 hul 2010 (UTC)

Hola Wikipedians! My name is Kelly and I am working for the Wikimedia Foundation during the 2010 Fundraiser. My job is to be the liaison between the Runa Simi community and the Foundation. This year's fundraiser is intended to be a collaborative and global effort, we recognize that banner messages that perform well in the United States don't necessarily translate well, or appeal to international audiences.

I'm contacting you as I am currently looking for translators who are willing to contribute to this project, helping to translate and localize messages into Runa Simi and suggesting messages that would appeal to Runa Simi readers on the Fundraising Meta Page. We've started the setup on meta for both banner submission, statistical analysis, and grouping volunteers together.
Use the talk pages on meta, talk to your local communities, talk to others, talk to us, and add your feedback to the proposed messages as well! I look forward to working with you during this year's fundraiser.

The Fundraising Committee is issuing all interested community members a challenge: we want you to beat Jimmy. The appeal from Jimmy Wales and the corresponding banner have been tested head-to-head with other successful banners, and the results are clear: it's our best performing message... by a lot. This year we have a lofty fundraising goal; we need all of our banners to bring in donations like the Jimmy Appeal, but no one wants to keep the Jimmy banner up for two months. We want to run donor quotes, and other wonderful ideas, but we have to have banners that work as well as or better than the Jimmy appeal.

Add the banners you think will 'beat Jimmy' here to be tested Tuesday October 12 against Jimmy.

Please translate this message into Runa Simi if you can and post it below. Thanks! Klyman 18:08 6 ukt 2010 (UTC)

Greetings :) As you may have noticed, the banners are up and we are in the final stages of testing before the official kickoff on Monday the 15th for this year's WMF fundraiser. We are in a bit of a time crunch to get the Runa Simi translations in before the Fundraiser launch on Monday. We really don't want to have English pages on the Runa Simi projects. This is a calll to to community to get involved, help translate and recruit translators to get all the fundraising materials completed. Here is the translation hub with the Jimmy Appeal, Core Messages, FAQ and Benefactors pages that need to be completed Translations. Once these are completed, we can build the new landing pages and localize the fundraiser! Thanks so much, let me know if there are any questions!Klyman 20:42 13 nuw 2010 (UTC)

english translation of above : I'm learning Ecuadorian kichwa, which significantly differs from the Peruvian variant. Is it possible to contribute here in this particular dialect, particularly for the pages concerning Ecuador ? If the answer is yes, I would enjoy contributing a bit here - answer here or in my discussion page, in french, english, spanish or why not Runa simi...ecuadorian if possible. Yours, -- Sylvain2803(Jan.26, 12:19) )

Hi Sylvain, as for me you can choose the variant you prefer, I'm always pleased about your contributions anyway. Only, in case there are parallel pages in this WP it might be difficult with the interwikis. -- CaTi0604 15:59 13 awr 2011 (UTC)

Your point with the interwikis make sense, and advocates for one single article for each topic. However, I think it is really ugly to have an article with parts in Peruvian quechua and parts and parts in Ecuadorian kichwa, as it is currently the case for Ikwadur (these variants don't use the same letters etc., it's like having an article mixing French and Catalan, it might be understandable for speakers of both languages but rather dirty). And in case this wikipedia splits one day into two, it will be a big mess to sort out the Kichwa parts from the Quechua parts. On the other hand, the solution of having two parallel articles might make sense if :

The interwikis point to the quechua version if it exists

If no quechua version exists, the kichwa version should have the main name and the interwikis (ex. Tránsito Amaguaña), and if someone wants to create it in quechua, then the existing page sould be moved to Tránsito Amaguaña (kichwa), without its interwikis, and the new page put in its place with the interwikis. This way, it should be easy to move all the kichwa articles to a new wikipedia in this eventuality.

On top of each page which has a quechua and kichwa version, there is a notice for the reader telling that this page also exists is Kichwa / This page also exists in quechua

This seems to me a possible policy, that would allow contributions in both variants without ugly mixed-up articles (and possibly attract some contributors from Ecuador). The basic question is : is it suitable to stay in the long run with just one quechua+kichwa wikipedia (in which case, can the articles mix both variants, or should they be in one single variant), or should we prepare a possible future split (for the long term, right now it would make no sense at all to split !), in which case we should create parallel articles. I have no satisfactory answer to that, but I think we should think about it now before it becomes a big mess.

To make it clearer with an example, I don't know what to do with this Humberto Cholango article, I want to add stuff, but I for sure don't want to replace everything with kichwa which would be an obvious lack of respect for the previous contributors, and destroy information. I don't really want to mix up both variants either because the result would be hardly understandable and quite ugly, so maybe two parallel articles is the best short-term solution. I don't know, and I'm interested in the opinion of the historical contributors of this wikipedia. --Sylvain2803 16:39 13 awr 2011 (UTC)

Now I'll answer in English so really everyone will understand. I think it would really be good to open a Kichwa Wikipedia project on Wikimedia Incubator. There is already a code for Kichwa on openoffice.org: qu_EC [ qu_EC Shukllachiska Kichwa Quichua (Ecuador) ] I would definitely support this incubator project so it could become a real Wikipedia as soon as possible. But we have to find a translator for http://translatewiki.org/ to have the MediaWiki messages translated. But maybe it will be accepted after translation of the most-used messages. Fallback language for Kichwa will be Qhichwa and vice versa. I will help to create articles, but Sylvain2803 can make the start. It is like the case of the Asturian, Bavarian and other regional Wikipedias: Let's start. -- AlimanRunawillaway 17:24 13 awr 2011 (UTC)

That's good. I am convinced that a Kichwa Wikipedia will turn out to be necessary in the long run. The sooner it is established the better to avoid numerous unsatisfying interim arrangements in this WP and to finally enable people from Ecuador to read and write WP articles in their own language. -- CaTi0604 07:13 14 awr 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks a lot AlimanRuna for having done this, even though I probably won't have much time in the forthcoming months. That sounds like a good solution, I hope they accept this in spite of the lack of an ISO code. Another point in favor of this wikipedia would be this article of the Constitution of Ecuador : El castellano es el idioma oficial del Ecuador; el castellano, el kichwa y el shuar son idiomas oficiales de relación intercultural which strongly points to the official and recognized status of this language - I guess that's what the guys at th WM foundation are trying to evaluate (Art. 2 in the Preambulo, cf. [1]). Regarding the traduction of the mediawiki message, as far as I know there is no automatic translator for kichwa, but I can do it progressively with the help of the existing Qhichwa messages. Maybe a link to [2] might make it clear that kichwa does have an existence - linguistically and not just from an administrative point of view. --Sylvain2803 08:40 14 awr 2011 (UTC)

OK, I put these elements on the request, let's see what happens. --Sylvain2803 10:36 14 awr 2011 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account.

Further details and educational materials will be available shortly. The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party. Referendum details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will be posted at Meta:Image filter referendum shortly.

Sorry for delivering you a message in English. Please help translate the pages on the referendum on Meta and join the translators mailing list.

I apologize that you are receiving this message in English. Please help translate it.

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is discussing changes to its Terms of Use. The discussion can be found at Talk:Terms of use. Everyone is invited to join in. Because the new version of Terms of use is not in final form, we are not able to present official translations of it. Volunteers are welcome to translate it, as German volunteers have done at m:Terms of use/de, but we ask that you note at the top that the translation is unofficial and may become outdated as the English version is changed. The translation request can be found at m:Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2 -- Maggie Dennis, Community Liaison 01:13 27 ukt 2011 (UTC)

I apologize that you are receiving this message in English. Please help translate it.

Do you want to help attract new contributors to Wikimedia projects?

Do you want to improve retention of our existing editors?

Do you want to strengthen our community by diversifying its base and increasing the overall number of excellent participants around the world?

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking Community Fellows and project ideas for the Community Fellowship Program. A Fellowship is a temporary position at the Wikimedia Foundation in order to work on a specific project or set of projects. Submissions for 2012 are encouraged to focus on the theme of improving editor retention and increasing participation in Wikimedia projects. If interested, please submit a project idea or apply to be a fellow by January 15, 2012. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships for more information.

New common*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.

The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link.

Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.

Better timezone recognition in user preferences.

Improved diff readability for colorblind people.

The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).

More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists).

Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language.

Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language.

Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.

Report any problems on the labs beta wiki and we'll work to address them before they software is released to the production wikis.

Note that this cluster does have SUL but it is not integrated with SUL in production, so you'll need to create another account. You should avoid using the same password as you use here. — Global message delivery 16:30 15 ini 2012 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation has brought together a new team of developers who are dedicated to language support. This team is to support all the languages and consequently it is not realistic to expect that the team members can provide proper support for your language. It is for this reason that we are looking for volunteers who will make up a language support team.

This language support team will be asked to provide us with information about their language. Such information may need to be provided either to us or on a website that we will indicate to you. Another activity will be to test software that will likely have an effect on the running of the MediaWiki software. We are looking for people who clearly identify their ability. Formal knowledge is definitely appreciated.

As much of the activity will be concentrated on translatewiki.net, it will be a plus when team members know how to localise at translatewiki.net.
Thanks, Gmeijssen 19:48 1 phi 2012 (UTC)

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki (the software powering this wiki) to its latest version this month. You can help to test it before it is enabled, to avoid disruption and breakage. More information is available in the full announcement. Thank you for your understanding.

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to do limited testing of IPv6 on June 2-3. If there are not too many problems, we may fully enable IPv6 on World IPv6 day (June 6), and keep it enabled.

What this means for your project:

At least on June 2-3, 2012, you may see a small number of edits from IPv6 addresses, which are in the form "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334". See e.g. w:en:IPv6 address. These addresses should behave like any other IP address: You can leave messages on their talk pages; you can track their contributions; you can block them. (See the full version of this announcement for notes on range blocks.)

In the mid term, some user scripts and tools will need to be adapted for IPv6.

We suspect that IPv6 usage is going to be very low initially, meaning that abuse should be manageable, and we will assist in the monitoring of the situation.

Read the full version of this announcement on how to test the behavior of IPv6 with various tools and how to leave bug reports, and to find a fuller analysis of the implications of the IPv6 migration.

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2011 Picture of the Year competition is now open. We are interested in your opinion as to which images qualify to be the Picture of the Year 2011. Any user registered at Commons or a Wikimedia wiki SUL-related to Commons with more than 75 edits before 1 April 2012 (UTC) is welcome to vote and, of course everyone is welcome to view!

About 600 of the best of Wikimedia Common's photos, animations, movies and graphics were chosen –by the international Wikimedia Commons community– out of 12 million files during 2011 and are now called Featured Pictures.

From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons Features Pictures of all flavors.

As many of you are aware, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees recently initiated important changes in the way that money is being distributed within the Wikimedia movement. As part of this, a new community-led "Funds Dissemination Committee" (FDC) is currently being set up. Already in 2012-13, its recommendations will guide the decisions about the distribution of over 10 million US dollars among the Foundation, chapters and other eligible entities.

Now, seven capable, knowledgeable and trustworthy community members are sought to volunteer on the initial Funds Dissemination Committee. It is expected to take up its work in September. In addition, a community member is sought to be the Ombudsperson for the FDC process. If you are interested in joining the committee, read the call for volunteers. Nominations are planned to close on August 15.

The quest to get editors free access to the sources they need is gaining momentum.

Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of nearly 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers in every major subject, including general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias. There are 125 full Credo 350 accounts available, with access even to 100 more references works than in Credo's original donation. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

HighBeam Research has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications including newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. Thousands of new articles are added daily, and archives date back over 25 years covering a wide range of subjects and industries. There are 250 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

Questia is an online research library for books and journal articles focusing on the humanities and social sciences. Questia has curated titles from over 300 trusted publishers including 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as encyclopedia entries. There will soon be 1000 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

You might also be interested in the idea to create a central Wikipedia Library where approved editors would have access to all participating resource donors. Add your feedback to the Community Fellowship proposal. Apologies for the English message (translate here). Go sign up :) --Ocaasi (talk) 02:23 16 awu 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for addressing you in English. I would be grateful if you could translate this message into your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a request for comment on a proposed program that could provide legal assistance to users in specific support roles who are named in a legal complaint as a defendant because of those roles. We wanted to be sure that your community was aware of this discussion and would have a chance to participate in that discussion.

If this page is not the best place to publicize this request for comment, please help spread the word to those who may be interested in participating. (If you'd like to help translating the "request for comment", program policy or other pages into your language and don't know how the translation system works, please come by my user talk page at m:User talk:Mdennis (WMF). I'll be happy to assist or to connect you with a volunteer who can assist.)

As some of you might already have heard Wikimedia Deutschland is working on a new Wikimedia project. It is called m:Wikidata. The goal of Wikidata is to become a central data repository for the Wikipedias, its sister projects and the world. In the future it will hold data like the number of inhabitants of a country, the date of birth of a famous person or the length of a river. These can then be used in all Wikimedia projects and outside of them.

The project is divided into three phases and "we are getting close to roll-out the first phase". The phases are:

language links in the Wikipedias (making it possible to store the links between the language editions of an article just once in Wikidata instead of in each linked article)

infoboxes (making it possible to store the data that is currently in infoboxes in one central place and share the data)

lists (making it possible to create lists and similar things based on queries to Wikidata so they update automatically when new data is added or modified)

It'd be great if you could join us, test the demo version, provide feedback and take part in the development of Wikidata. You can find all the relevant information including an FAQ and sign-up links for our on-wiki newsletter on the Wikidata page on Meta.

For further discussions please use this talk page (if you are uncomfortable writing in English you can also write in your native language there) or point me to the place where your discussion is happening so I can answer there.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising team have begun our 'User Experience' project, with the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries outside the USA and enhancing the localization of our donation pages. I am searching for volunteers to spend 30 minutes on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real-time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. Please sing up and help us with our 'User Experience' project! :) If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!

Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.

I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) Next week, the Wikimedia Foundation will transition its main technical operations to a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. This is intended to improve the technical performance and reliability of all Wikimedia sites, including this wiki. There will be some times when the site will be in read-only mode, and there may be full outages; the current target windows for the migration are January 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2013, from 17:00 to 01:00 UTC (see other timezones on timeanddate.com). More information is available in the full announcement.

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2012 Picture of the Year competition is now open. We're interested in your opinion as to which images qualify to be the Picture of the Year for 2012. Voting is open to established Wikimedia users who meet the following criteria:

Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was registered before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000 [UTC].

This user account must have more than 75 edits on any single Wikimedia project before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000 [UTC]. Please check your account eligibility at the POTY 2012 Contest Eligibility tool.

Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account through SUL).

Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the international Wikimedia Commons community in the past year are all entered in this competition. From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons features pictures of all flavors.

For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories. Two rounds of voting will be held: In the first round, you can vote for as many images as you like. The first round category winners and the top ten overall will then make it to the final. In the final round, when a limited number of images are left, you must decide on the one image that you want to become the Picture of the Year.

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

Do you have an idea for a project to improve this community or website?

Do you think you could complete your idea if only you had some funding?

Do you want to help other people turn their ideas into project plans or grant proposals?

Please join us in the IdeaLab, an incubator for project ideas and Individual Engagement Grant proposals.

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking new ideas and proposals for Individual Engagement Grants. These grants fund individuals or small groups to complete projects that help improve this community. If interested, please submit a completed proposal by February 15, 2013. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG for more information.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this locally.

Wikidata has been in development for a few months now. It is now time for the roll-out of the first part of it on your Wikipedia. Phase 1 is the support for the management of language links. It is already being used on the Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian and English Wikipedias. The next step is to enable the extension on all other Wikipedias. We have currently planned this for March 6.

Wikidata is a central place to store data that you can usually find in infoboxes. Think of it as something like Wikimedia Commons but for data (like the number of inhabitants of a country or the length of a river) instead of multimedia. The first part of this project (centralizing language links) is being rolled out now. The more fancy things will follow later.

Language links in the sidebar are going to come from Wikidata in addition to the ones in the wiki text. To edit them, scroll to the bottom of the language links, and click edit. You no longer need to maintain these links by hand in the wiki text of the article.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this locally. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

As I annonced 2 weeks ago, Wikidata phase 1 (language links) has been deployed here today. Language links in the sidebar are coming from Wikidata in addition to the ones in the wiki text. To edit them, scroll to the bottom of the language links, and click edit. You no longer need to maintain these links by hand in the wiki text of the article.

(Please consider translating this message for the benefit of your fellow Wikimedians)

Greetings. As you might have seen on the Wikimedia tech blog or the tech ambassadors list, a new functionality called "Lua" is being enabled on all Wikimedia sites today. Lua is a scripting language that enables you to write faster and more powerful MediaWiki templates.

If you have questions about how to convert existing templates to Lua (or how to create new ones), we'll be holding two support sessions on IRC next week: one on Wednesday (for Oceania, Asia & America) and one on Friday (for Europe, Africa & America); see m:IRC office hours for the details. If you can't make it, you can also get help at mw:Talk:Lua scripting.

If you'd like to learn about this kind of events earlier in advance, consider becoming a Tech ambassador by subscribing to the mailing list. You will also be able to help your fellow Wikimedians have a voice in technical discussions and be notified of important decisions.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

A while ago the first phase of Wikidata was enabled on this Wikipedia. This means you are getting the language links in each article from Wikidata. It is soon time to enable the second phase of Wikidata (infoboxes) here. We have already done this on the [first 11 Wikipedias] (it, he, hu, ru, tr, uk, uz, hr, bs, sr, sh) and things are looking good. The next step is English Wikipedia. This is planned for April 8. If everything works out fine we will deploy on all remaining Wikipedias on April 10. I will update this part of the FAQ if there are any issues forcing us to change this date. I will also sent another note to this village pump once the deployment is finished.

What will happen once we have phase 2 enabled here? Once it is enabled in a few days you will be able to make use of the structured data that is available on Wikidata in your articles/infoboxes. It includes things like the symbol for a chemical element, the ISBN for a book or the top level domain of a country. (None of this will happen automatically. Someone will have to change the article or infobox template for this to happen!)

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

A while ago the first phase of Wikidata was enabled on this Wikipedia. This means you are getting the language links in each article from Wikidata. We have now enabled the second phase of Wikidata (infoboxes) here. We have already done this on the [first 11 Wikipedias] (it, he, hu, ru, tr, uk, uz, hr, bs, sr, sh) a month ago and two days ago on the English Wikipedia. Today all the remaining Wikipedias followed.

What does having phase 2 enabled here mean? You are now able to make use of the structured data that is available on Wikidata in your articles/infoboxes. It includes things like the symbol for a chemical element, the ISBN for a book or the top level domain of a country. (None of this will happen automatically. Someone will have to change the article or infobox template for this to happen!) The current state is just the beginning though. It will be extended based on feedback we get from you now.

The default position of the "edit" link in page section headers is going to change soon. The "edit" link will be positioned adjacent to the page header text rather than floating opposite it.

Section edit links will be to the immediate right of section titles, instead of on the far right. If you're an editor of one of the wikis which already implemented this change, nothing will substantially change for you; however, scripts and gadgets depending on the previous implementation of section edit links will have to be adjusted to continue working; however, nothing else should break even if they are not updated in time.

Ideas to do this all the way to 2009 at least. It is often difficult to track which of several potential section edit links on the far right is associated with the correct section, and many readers and anonymous or new editors may even be failing to notice section edit links at all, since they read section titles, which are far away from the links.

Latest Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community.Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

The latest version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf4) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and to the English Wikipedia (with a Wikidata software update) on May 20. It will be updated on all other Wikipedia sites on May 22. [3][4]

A software update will perhaps result in temporary issues with images. Please report any problems you notice. [5]

MediaWiki recognizes links in twelve new schemes. Users can now link to SSH, XMPP and Bitcoin directly from wikicode. [6]

The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27. [13]

An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23. [14]

The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will automatically rename some usernames. [15]

Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)

gets Wikipedia editors free access to reliable sources that are behind paywalls. I want to alert you to our latest donation.

Cochrane Collaboration is an independent medical nonprofit organization that conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions, which it then publishes in the Cochrane Library.

Cochrane has generously agreed to give free, full-access accounts to medical editors. Individual access would otherwise cost between $300 and $800 per account.

On July 9, 2013, Universal Language Selector (ULS) will be enabled on this wiki. The ULS provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). Making it available here is the last phase of making ULS available on all Wikimedia wikis.

Hello, Sorry for English but It's very important for bot operators so I hope someone translates this. Pywikipedia is migrating to Git so after July 26, SVN checkouts won't be updated If you're using Pywikipedia you have to switch to git, otherwise you will use out-dated framework and your bot might not work properly. There is a manual for doing that and a blog post explaining about this change in non-technical language. If you have question feel free to ask in mw:Manual talk:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit, mailing list, or in the IRC channel. Best Amir(via Global message delivery). 13:41 23 hul 2013 (UTC)

We want to find out as much as we can from you about VisualEditor and how it helps your Wikipedia, and having local pages is a great way to start. We also encourage you to leave feedback on Mediawiki where the community can offer ideas, opinions, and point out bugs that may still exist in the software that need to be reported to Bugzilla. If you are able to speak for the concerns of others in English on MediaWiki or locally I encourage you to help your community to be represented in this process.

If you can help translate the user interface for VisualEditor to your language, you can help with that as well. Translatewiki has open tasks for translating VisualEditor. A direct link to translate the user interface is here. You can see how we are doing with those translations here. You need an account on Translatewiki to translate. This account is free and easy to create.

If we can help your community in any way with this process, please let me know and I will do my best to assist your Wikipedia with this |exciting development. You can contact me on my meta talk page or by email. You can also contact Patrick Earley for help with translations and documents on Mediawiki. We look forward to working with you to bring the VisualEditor experience to your Wikipedia! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:12 30 hul 2013 (UTC)

Greetings. Starting on August 21 (tomorrow), all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. More information is available at m:HTTPS.

If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on bugzilla, on IRC (in the #wikimedia-operations channel) or on meta. If you can't use the other methods, you can also send an e-mail to https@wikimedia.org.

First, I’d like to apologize for the English. If you can, please help to translate this for other members of your community.

The legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation would greatly appreciate your input on the best way to manage the "community logo" (pictured here) to best balance protection of the projects with community support. Accordingly, they have created a “request for consultation” on Meta where they set out briefly some of the issues to be considered and the options that they perceive. Your input would be invaluable in helping guide them in how best to serve our mission.

Notifications inform you of new activity that affects you -- and let you take quick action.

(This message is in English, please translate as needed)

Greetings!

Notifications will inform users about new activity that affects them on this wiki in a unified way: for example, this new tool will let you know when you have new talk page messages, edit reverts, mentions or links -- and is designed to augment (rather than replace) the watchlist. The Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team developed this tool (code-named 'Echo') earlier this year, to help users contribute more productively to MediaWiki projects.

We're now getting ready to bring Notifications to almost all other Wikimedia sites, and are aiming for a 22 October deployment, as outlined in this release plan. It is important that notifications is translated for all of the languages we serve.

There are three major points of translation needed to be either done or checked:

Notifications help on mediawiki.org. This page can be hosted after translation on mediawiki.org or we can localize it to this Wikipedia. You do not have to have an account to translate on mediawiki, but single-user login will create it for you there if you follow the link.

This community consultation was commenced on September 24. The following day, two individuals filed a legal opposition against the registration of the Community logo.

The question is whether the Wikimedia Foundation should seek a collective membership mark with respect to this logo or abandon its registration and protection of the trademark.

We want to make sure that everyone get a chance to speak up so that we can get clear direction from the community. We would therefore really appreciate the community's help in translating this announcement from English so that everyone is able to understand it.

We would like to let you know about Beta Features, a new program from the Wikimedia Foundation that lets you try out new features before they are released for everyone.

Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming software and give feedback to help improve them. This special preference page lets designers and engineers experiment with new features on a broad scale, but in a way that's not disruptive.

Beta Features is now ready for testing on MediaWiki.org. It will also be released on Wikimedia Commons and MetaWiki this Thursday, 7 November. Based on test results, the plan is to release it on all wikis worldwide on 21 November, 2013.

Would you like to try out Beta Features now? After you log in on MediaWiki.org, a small 'Beta' link will appear next to your 'Preferences'. Click on it to see features you can test, check the ones you want, then click 'Save'. Learn more on the Beta Features page.

Beta Features was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Design, Multimedia and VisualEditor teams. Along with other developers, they will be adding new features to this experimental program every few weeks. They are very grateful to all the community members who helped create this project — and look forward to many more productive collaborations in the future.

The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.

The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.

We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.

Hello. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you can translate this message!

VisualEditor is coming to this project on December 2nd. VisualEditor is software in development to allow people to edit pages in MediaWiki without needing to learn wikitext syntax (like typing [[ and ]] to link to another page). It is already available and in use on some Wikipedia projects. Please see mw:Help:VisualEditor/FAQ for more information.

When this software arrives, you will have the option to use it or to use the current wikitext editor. When you press “edit”, you will get the new VisualEditor software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press “edit source”. For more information about how to use VisualEditor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

We hope that this software will be useful to people in your community, and we can really use your help to make it better! Please let us know if you find any problems. If you're willing and able, please report the issue in Bugzilla in the "VisualEditor" product. If you would prefer not, please explain the issue you found on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org. If you notice major issues impacting your project, we would appreciate it if you could let us know directly. Please leave a note on my talk page or, if it’s an emergency, like an unexpected bug causing widespread issues, reach out to James Forrester, the Product Manager, at jforrester@wikimedia.org for immediate attention.

If you have time, please test the new editor before it is deployed. This would let us know about any serious issues specific to this Wikipedia before the rollout. To enable VisualEditor now, go to your “Preferences”, select “Editing” and select “Enable VisualEditor”.

We would also appreciate help with translation with the pages about VisualEditor here and on MediaWiki.org, and its user interface. See VisualEditor TranslationCentral for general information. To translate the user interface, start by creating an account at TranslateWiki. Once your account request is approved, all you need to do is select your language from this list. This will give you a list of individual lines and paragraphs. The English original will be on one side, with the option to “edit” on the other. Pressing “edit” will open an edit window where you can work.

The User Guide is another important document. To translate this, simply go to the MediaWiki.org page, and select “translate this page”. Your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. If you want to help with translations and would like to talk about how, please leave a message for me on my talk page.

Wikimedia España invites you to join the Monuments of Spain Challenge. And what’s that? It’s a contest. You have to edit, translate or expand articles about the Spanish monuments and you will be granted points. So you’re not just writing about wonderful buildings: you can get prizes!

The time of the contest will include all October and any information you may need is right here.

Join in and good luck!

PS: We would be grateful if you could translate this note into Quechua.

Hello, Content Translation has now been enabled as an opt-in beta feature on this Wikipedia. To start translating, enable the beta feature and go to Special:ContentTranslation or to your contributions page and create a new translation by selecting the source language, the article name and target language. If the article already exists then a warning will be displayed. After you translate the article, you can publish it directly as a new page on the Wikipedia. In case the article gets created by another user while you were translating, you will see an option to save the newly published translation under your user namespace. The number of published pages can be seen on the Content Translation stats page.

Since, this is the first time we have installed the tool on this Wikipedia, there are chances that there may be some problems or service disruptions which we are not yet aware of. We will be monitoring the usage to check for any failures or issues, but please do let us know on the Content Translation talk page or through Phabricator if you spot any problems that prevent you from using the tool. For more information, please read about how to use the tool. You can also view a short screencast on how to use Content Translation. My apologies for writing this announcement only in English. Please feel free to translate this message for wider distribution. Thank you. --KartikMistry (rimanakuy) 17:25 21 may 2015 (UTC)